Days 9 and 10: Museum Madness

The Paris Museum Pass has been on of the saving graces of this trip, pricewise. For a fraction of the cost it would take to visit the monuments individually, we've been able to just waltz in to most places. The only downside of this pass is that is has caused the most evil of 6 day marathons through Paris. See, the museum pass works with consecutive days, for 2, 4 or 6 days. We got the 6 day pass and the last 6 days have been utter madness.

Between Versailles and the Arc de Triumph we were already tired, but the last two days were the days that we actually ended up going to the MUSEUMS and despite the distinct lack of many stairs, the amount of walking was monumental.

We started with the Louvre, or at least, we wanted to start with the Louvre, but it turns out it was closed for the morning and would be opening later in the day, so we set to wandering around the gardens of the Tullierie, watching the statues and ending up at the Orangerie, a museum where they have a display of Monet's water lilies. Once again, the Museum Pass saves the day!

Gardens and Statues, oh yeah.

After that we went to the Musee du Quai Branly, or the museum that very few people have ever heard of. It concerns itself mostly with aboriginal art and is quite lovely, but I had to do a presentation on it, so I might be a bit biased.

Also found another Space Invader, which is yes!

After that we finally arrived at the Louvre, which was as expected, very large, very full and wall to wall old paintings. It was rather interesting since our professor was giving u explanations, but it turns out that we needed to pay extra for that. We almost got kicked out right after the end of our lecture.

Monsieur Sassy-hat wouldn't have kicked us out!

All this was one day. The NEXT day we went to the Musee D'Orsay and the Pompidou Center, completing our 2 day romp through art history. The day was generally more uneventful, with the Orsay being under construction, and neither museum allowing us to lecture inside. The professor had to run around and do the lecture 3 times in small groups.

But on the plus side, MORE SPACE INVADERS!

The Pompidou Center was nice, though it didn't have any Magrittes, which I  was hoping for. The view was great though and then afterwards we all sat outside and watched a mime for about an hour. A nice relaxing ending to a frantic week.